America’s New-boyfriend Troubles….

I was excited last week when I got an invitation to a party over at America’s house. For one thing, I was looking forward to seeing what the new place looked like. She has lived in a LOT of houses, over the years, and some of them you wouldn’t wish on Antarctica.

Not like Antarctica was invited, of course. Everyone knows if you ask Antarctica anywhere she just starts up with the business. Oh, my ice sheet is melting, oh I keep shedding chunks of my shelf, blah blah blah. Whenever I see Antarctica, I just want to say, girlfriend: you’re a wreck.

When I first met America, she was living in a teepee. Seriously. You should have seen the clothes. Beads and fringe and feathers. She was like, I’m going over to the Pilgrims’ house! And we were like, You’re wearing that?

Then she moved in with England for a while, but surprise, surprise: they had this BIG blowup. After that, she moved out west. This was a very difficult period, and when I say difficult I mean: chaps and leather. Ten gallon hats. It was rough.

This was when I lost touch with America for a while, which I feel bad about, but then you know the old saying: History is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

So imagine how delighted I was when I heard she’d been to Europe—not once but twice! Apparently there was this big crisis over at Germany’s house and she organized an intervention. Germany went on this twelve-step plan and came back all buff. First time I saw him, in fact, I was, like, whoa, who is that? Holland’s little brother?

We were close, America and me, when I was growing up. To be quite honest, I looked up to her. She’d been through a lot of changes, but you had to respect her. At long last she seemed to have found herself.

Which was why we were all so surprised when she took up with Iraq. Not that I have anything against Iraq, but he’s so immature! Still, she saw something in him. She’d gone out with him before, back in 91, but this time it seemed serious.

And for the first few months, it seemed like it was all going to work out for her. She lost weight. You’d see her jogging in the morning with her torch and that crown with the little spikey things on it, which I know seems so totally 1770s, but what can I tell you: somehow she made it work.

Then we started hearing rumors about her war, how Iraq was secretly seeing some theocracy behind her back.

And so, as we sat around her new house, me and all her old friends, we had to ask. Are you happy? Is this what you wanted?

America started crying. I don’t know! She said. It was nice at first, but now it’s just—a quagmire!

She looked at us in desparation. I feel so alone! She said.

And all her old friends were like, of course you’re not alone. Why do you shut us out? Why do you always have to do everything on your own?

We all had a big cry, and then we all hugged, and then we opened up the presents. Kenya brought some coffee. Belgium brought waffles. Ireland brought some whiskey, same as always. “Hey,” said Ireland. “Is it okay if we open this now?”

I don’t know what’s going to happen with Iraq, but I’m hoping America will realize we love her. There’s nothing she could do that would change that. But I don’t know. Sometimes she troubles me.

We were all about to leave, when who comes bursting through the door but Antarctica, drenched and frosty, and in two seconds she starts up with the business. “I’m melting!” she wailed, dropping an ice shelf in the foyer. “I’m coming to pieces!”

Let your quacks and newspapers be cutting their capersAbout curing the vapors the scratch and the goutWith their medical potions, their serums and their lotionsUpholding their notions, they’re mighty put out.

Who can tell the true physic to all that’s patheticAnd pitch to the divil, cramp, colic and spleenYou’ll know it I think if you take a big drinkWith your mouth to the brink of a jug of poteen

So stick to the cratur’ the best thing in natureFor sinking your sorrows and raising your joysOh what botheration, no dose in the nationCan give consolation like poteen me boys.

No liquid cosmetic to lovers athleticOr bodies pathetic can give such a bloomAs the sweet by the powers in the garden of flowersEver gave their own bowers such a darling perfumeAnd this liquid so rare if you willingly shareTo be taking your hair when it’s frizzled and deadOh the sod has the merit to yield the true spiritSo strong it will shake all the hairs from your head

Then stick to the cratur’ the best thing in natureFor sinking your sorrows and raising your joysOh since its perfection, no doctor’s directionCan cleanse the complexion like poteen me boys

While a child in me cradle, me nurse with her ladleWas filling my mouth with a notion of papWhen a drop from her bottle fell into my throttleI stumbled and capered clean out of her lap

On the floor I lay crawlin’ and screaming and bawling‘Til me mother and father were called to the foreAll sobbing and sighing they feared I was dyingBut soon found I only was crying for more.

So stick to the cratur’ the best thing in natureFor sinking your sorrows and raising your joysOh lord how they’d chuckle if babes in their truckleThey only could suckle on poteen me boys

Through my youthful aggression, through times of depressionMy childhood’s impression still clung to my mindAnd at school or at college the basis of knowledgeI never could gulp ’til with whiskey combined

And as older I’m growing times ever bestowin’On Erin’s potation, a flavor so fineAnd how ere they may lecture on jove and his nectarItself is the only true liquid divine

So stick to the cratur’ the best thing in natureFor sinking your sorrows and raising your joysOh lord, ’tis the right thing for courting and fightingThere’s nowt so exciting as poteen me boys.

Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipes and fiddleWhat’s hotter than mustard and milder than creamWhat best wets your whistle, what’s clearer than crystalWhat’s sweeter than honey and stronger than steam

What’ll make the lame walk, what will make the dumb talk,The elixir of life and philospher’s stoneAnd what helped Mr. Brunnell to build the Thames TunnelWasn’t it poteen from ould Inisowen

So stick to the cratur’ the best thing in natureFor sinking your sorrows and raising your joysOh lord, it’s no wonder, if lightning and thunderWeren’t made from the plunder of poteen me boys.

You maidens pathetic, with lovers athleticFor liquid cosmetic, you can’t beat the dropWith a glow to your cheek, it will make your heart leapIt’ll quiet a stallion or cure an old cobAt the mouth you would drool, be reduced to a foolYou’d kick up your heels and you’d peel to the buffThen ’tis he’d be pathetic while you’d be athleticIf only you’d take a few drops of the stuff

So stick to the cratur’ the best thing in natureFor sinking your sorrows and raising your joysFor there’s nothing like whiskey to make maidens friskyIt soon separates all the men from the boys.

Jenny Boylan's most recent book is the novella, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT, available from She-Books. JFB also wrote the introduction for the new TRANS BODIES/TRANS SELVES, published by Oxford University Press in May. The paperback edition of STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU. along with the updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition of SHE'S NOT THERE (Random House) arrived in April of 2014.

PROFESSOR JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN, author of thirteen books, is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. She also serves as the national co-chair of the Board of Directors of GLAAD, the media advocacy group for LGBT people worldwide.

She has been a contributor to the op/ed page of the New York Times since 2007; in 2013 she became Contributing Opinion Writer for the page. Jenny also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Kinsey Institute for Research on Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

Her 2003 memoir, She's Not There: a Life in Two Genders (Broadway/Doubleday/Random House) was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for civil rights. Jenny has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show on four occasions; Live with Larry King twice; the Today Show, the Barbara Walters Special, NPR's Marketplace and Talk of the Nation; she has also been the subject of documentaries on CBS News' 48 Hours and The History Channel.

She lives in New York City, and in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, with her wife, Deedie, and her two sons, Zach and Sean.
Check out the Twitter feed at JennyBoylan; or follow Jennifer Finney Boylan on facebook.

The Boylan Family, summer 2010

Will Forte as Jennifer Finney Boylan on “Saturday Night Live”

Jenny with Barbara Walters, December, 2008

Jenny atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin

August, 2002.

Surrounded

With President Clinton and Maine's Governor John Baldacci, fall 2006.

JFB and Edward Albee

Edward had been my teacher at Johns Hopkins in the winter of 1986. He visited Colby in fall, 2007. As we took our leave of each other, he kissed me on both cheeks and said, "We have done well. You and I."

Jenny and her teacher, the great John Barth

Jack was my professor at JHU when I did my thesis, back in the day. After many years, I can now confidently say I finally understand his definition of plot. Which is, of course, "the perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium."